Ep. 12 • Hari Kondabolu
In this episode of Your Mama’s Kitchen, comedian, writer, and TV host Hari Kondabolu talks about growing up in Queens, New York City, where his mother brought her native South India to the dinner table with an unforgettable peanut chutney. Hari also discusses his parents’ quiet activism—and how, from his mother, Hari learned to use humor to confront the world’s injustices.
Hari Kondabolu is a comedian, writer, TV host, and podcaster based in Brooklyn, New York. His comedy covers subjects including race, inequity, and Indian stereotypes; the latter was the basis of Kondabolu’s 2017 documentary The Problem with Apu, a cultural critique of The Simpsons’ character Apu Nahasapeemapetilon. His 2018 Netflix special Warn Your Relatives was named in several Best Of Year lists, including ones from TIME, Paste, and Cosmopolitan. Hari has released two comedy albums, Waiting for 2042 and Mainstream American Comic, and was a writer and correspondent on the FX show Totally Biased with W. Kamau Bell. He regularly appears on NPR’s Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me! and WNYC’s Midday on WNYC. Kondabolu attended both Bowdoin College and Wesleyan University and earned a Masters in Human Rights from the London School of Economics.
